Drop Watch Hold 2017: Well, 2 out of 8 isn’t bad…(15)

Disclaimer: This is an old ass post. I probably do not agree with the ideas it presents, and I in all likelihood denounce whatever is written herein. It has been preserved entirely for the purpose of keeping the history and progression of the blog visible.

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai!

This was a short series that I really don’t have a big problem with. I really like the design sensibilities of the character and their simplistic colour palette. However, I don’t like the backgrounds at all, and the characters look pretty bad in motion. Plus it’s just not very funny.

Score: N/A*

*Dropped after episode 1

Re:Creators

This is a show that was really hyped up to me, and I will admit, I don’t think it’s really horrible by any means. In fact, there are a few things that I really quite like about Re:Creators. But there’s a larger concentration of stuff I thought sucked.

When it comes to the good things, the character designs are pretty good. While some of them felt perhaps a bit over-designed, I still liked them in general. Except for main dude, he looked kind of generic. The character designs also work pretty well in animation two, with a lot of pretty good animation littered throughout. I don’t have any problems with the production aspects.

I also really like the mechanics of the world. The way that the characters are brought over I thought was really cool, and the fact that they only knew their story up until whichever version of them is most popular knows. That’s pretty interesting. But that’s about all that’s really fantastic.

The show is at this point, all people standing around spouting exposition at each other. I think I have to clarify something here, as a lot of other shows in this post have the same problem. Exposition is in many cases completely necessary. It only becomes bad when it’s presented badly. There needs to be something interesting for the viewer to latch on to. Be it a cool directing trick or some fantastic animation or an interesting setting, the visual component must be able to grab the viewers attention when the narrative takes a break for some info dumping. This show’s exposition is people standing around in Tokyo talking at each other. How exciting.

I think much of my disdain for this show comes from the fact that I read Opus by Satoshi Kon recently. That manga is basically this, but backwards and better. A guy goes into one of his creations and then shit gets real. All the themes in this show are in that manga. Except Opus is two volumes and this is 22 fucking episodes. I know it’s not really fair to judge this show on something else, but these themes aren’t new or interesting to me, so that can’t grab me, and the plot certainly doesn’t grab me, so outside of already explained mechanics, I just don’t care.

Score: N/A*
*Dropped after episode 2

Ballroom e Youkoso

This is another show that was really hyped up to me but fell really short. I cannot claim that this is a bad show. There was obviously a lot of heart put into it, but there was just too much annoying bullshit in it for me to thoroughly enjoy the experience of watching it.

First of all, this show looks really bad, let’s get that out of the way. Specifically, the character designs are the worst part. They just look super weird you know? Their necks are gross and substantially more detailed than the rest of their bodies. But their faces are just as gross. The eyes and mouths both look weird, and the nose is generally too big. They just look so freaky. But that would be fine, I can handle character designs that don’t match my sensibilities, but the dancing was also really bad.

Or, should I say the lack of dancing was really bad. So much of it in this episode was just stills. And when it didn’t actually show us some movement, it tended to be either much too short or much too choppy. Hell, it’s the first episode and they already have CG background dancers. Everyone was praising this show for great dancing, but I don’t know, I thought it looked pretty horrendous. Really, the dancing fell into the same trap that the ice skating from Yuri on Ice did a couple years ago (I can’t believe it’s already been that long).

This show was also, literally every single other shounen sports show ever. Except the main protagonist wasn’t charismatic or interesting and had no motivation. Why did he choose ballroom dancing exactly? I mean, he said it’s because they were saying they wanted people to ‘look at them,’ or whatever, but I mean, he wasn’t struggling with overcoming shyness, and he certainly didn’t seem to want to be the center of attention, so, why? Normally in these shows, the main protag guy joins the sport because he wants to change something about himself or wants to prove something (Ippo wanted to stop getting beaten up, that guy from Haikyuu wanted to play a sport even though he was short) but this guy’s got nothing. So I can’t really see myself getting into and caring about his struggles.

Score: N/A*

*Dropped after episode 1

 

Our Love Has Always Been 10cm Apart

I really wanted this show to be good. I love rom-coms and now that I have the guilt of not having finished Kare Kano off my chest I’m finally free to watch as many as I want. So I was super excited to sit down and watch this show that seemed to be pretty good at first glance.

The problem is that it isn’t. Really this all comes down to how boring it is. There was too much fucking around in this episode. I’m totally fine with a show being all fucking around, I love Hidamari Sketch for instance, but the problem with this show’s fucking around is that it’s not fun. Someone talks to someone, they walk somewhere, they stand around, they talk again. Like, holy shit when is something actually going to happen in this fucking show? I would be okay with that if it was a 26 episode series or something but Jesus Christ, it’s only 6 episodes long! It was just wasting it’s runtime. I didn’t really feel a need to keep watching. I’m sure it’s not awful, but I still don’t care enough to subject myself to this.

Score: N/A*

*Dropped after episode 1

Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu

Oh boy, time for the new Ufotable show. Man, what happened to these guys? They used to make interesting and different anime ever couple of seasons, but now everything they make feels the same. Not that the quality for their stuff was really very high before (or now) but at least they tried new things (do you think they would make 2×2=Shinoubuden or Futakoi Alternative today?). Now here we have the next installment in their post Fate safe plays.

I would like to make it entirely clear that although I just took the piss out on Ufotable for a paragraph, I was totally willing to give this show a chance and like it. I go into every anime expecting and hoping that it’ll be good. This show wasn’t. Within the first seconds, we’re greeted with bad CG monsters and one of the most boringly designed cliffsides I’ve ever seen. Then we get introduced to our main characters. Something about this bothered me right away. The setting that this beginning part takes place in is really dark, yer for some reason the characters are just barely shaded. What gives? I thought these guys were known for having the ‘best looking’ shows, can’t they hire someone who can shade competently?

Anyway, really the worst thing about this show’s art is the background and vehicle design. I know I’m constantly going on about this, but it’s a big deal. You need to make your characters look like they belong in the setting. If they don’t there’s an automatic disconnect and it makes them look just like anime characters dropped on top of a landscape painting. The characters in this show look so out of place everywhere they go that it’s almost kind of uncanny. This is represented best by the chariot they were sitting on at the beginning. The wheels were a constant distraction because they looked so clean that it made me feel like there’s no way they were just using those in a rainstorm. You probably won’t care about that, but I do.

The thing that really got me to drop this was the structure of the episode. It starts with a lame action scene that’s more computer effects than actual movement, just like every Ufotable show in the last 9 years that just bored me to tears. It then followed this up by eight minutes of people walking/ standing around expositing about the world. I did a quick click through on the episode after and it looks like there is actually another action scene later, but I don’t care enough to keep watching.

Score: N/A*

*Dropped after exactly 10 minutes

 

Chou Yuu Sekai: Being the Reality

I knew from the opening moments of this show that it was going to be awful. It begins with some dude waking up from a PTSD dream, looking panicked but making a small grunt and them proceeding to be animated panting even though there was no sound there. This is a problem two-fold. First, the seiyuu doesn’t know how to portray emotion, and second,  that the sound design in this show is god awful.

That was just the tip of the iceberg though, as right after we were introduced to the character designs and background design of the series. I can only describe those aspects as ‘generic as fuck.’ The character designs are totally unmemorable, the school uniforms look like all the other ones I’ve seen in every anime since Haruhi. The battle suits are really bland as well, looking like something out of any other school action series of this ilk. The background characters also all look terrible. Their faces are never drawn properly and they look like they were scribbled.

But really the worst thing this show does is action. Which is pretty detrimental to an action series. I could tell it was going to be a problem more or less from the first moments of the first action scene. Said scene begins with a huge laser blast being shot from a sniper right at the giant monster they were fighting. The problem was that there was no punch. The blast hit the monster and while there was an explosion is felt really stilted. The monster didn’t lurch back, and it didn’t even brace for the impact. The laser beam also felt much too slow for how it was designed, which made the scene feel really weird. This show sucks.

Score: N/A*

*Dropped after episode 1

 

Piace: Watashi no Italian

This is a short 12 episode series with 4-minute episodes. It’s a fun little comedy show with a nice aesthetic and some genuinely funny moments. The character designs, while perhaps not incredibly memorable, are super cute and have really fantastic costume design. The backgrounds are great too, as they’re both pleasing to look at, and the characters actually feel like they fit.

I generally like this series on a pretty basic level. You see, Italian food is my favourite kind, and a short comedy series about Italian food is something that I really like the idea of. Really, my only big gripe with the show is that the people who subbed it didn’t put subtitles on the ending song, as every episode it changes to be a different recipe for something they cooked in that episode. But that’s on the subbers and not the work itself. While it doesn’t have much substance, this is still a genuinely funny comedy show if you feel like wasting a few minutes.

Score: 6

Kishibe Rohan wa Ugokanai

I really don’t have a ton to say about this OVA. It’s just a couple of side-stories for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Not Crash based on one of the side characters (and author insert), Rohan. It’s a pretty fun little OVA that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a JoJo fan. Although if not, there’s really not much here to make it worth your time.

Score: N/A*

*They sure are taking their sweet time getting that second episode out…